Johann
Sabastian Bach once said, “The aim and final end of all music should be none
other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” There is much said in the Bible, especially
in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament, about our responsibility to
music unto God for His Glory and honor and praise. It is less understood as to whether or not we
should music in order to refresh the soul.
First
of all, we should give some explanation as to what J. S. Bach could have meant
by making the statement that one of the final ends of our musicing should be
for “the refreshment of the soul”. A
general definition of soul is “the spiritual part of a human being” or the “the
seat of affections of mankind”. The
Greek word psuche (5590) is translated
life, lives, soul, souls, minds, appears in 95 verses in the AV New Testament. We are not sure what Bach meant but it is safe
to conjecture that he meant that one of music’s purposes was the refreshment of
the “inner man”.
Bach
was correct in believing that music was created by God for His Glory and for
the refreshment and edification of man.
Christian musician have the awesome responsibility and privilege to use
this wonderful art form to honor God and to edify and refresh the psyche of
mankind. We also know that Bach put God
first in much of his compositional efforts because he often SDG (sole Deo
gloria) at the end of his compositions.
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